New Boston Historical Society
New Boston, New Hampshire
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"End of the Rainbow" photo reprinted from the Milford Cabinet 8/26/1971 issue

"End of the Rainbow" — New Boston's 1971 Rock Festival
by Dan Rothman for the July 2024 issue of The New Boston Beacon

In August of 1971, two years after Woodstock, six thousand people came to New Boston for the "End of the Rainbow" Rock Festival. That's four times as many people as lived in our town at that time! The location was Roger Hartleb's field on the Second New Hampshire Turnpike just north of the Mont Vernon town line.

The headline performer was Edgar Winter and the White Trash. Also playing were Tim Hardin and local bands Thorn and Sweeney's Glider. The Allman Brothers Band was booked to play in New Boston but canceled at the last minute. That would have been a performance to see, as their lead guitarist Duane Allman died in a motorcycle accident only two months later.

The "End of the Rainbow" festival was advertised on radio stations from New Hampshire to Florida, and locally there were posters on every telephone pole. People began to arrive and set up their tents on Tuesday although the music didn't begin until the weekend, following the launch of a hot air balloon. Cars were parked for miles on either side of the Turnpike, and tow trucks were busy.

A free kitchen was set up by Smiley's Farm from Greenville to dispense bread baked over charcoal and zucchini boiled in galvanized trash cans. There was a field of cow corn nearby; by Sunday every last ear had been roasted on campfires and eaten. As temperatures approached 90 degrees the stream in Hartleb's field got a lot of use.

I first read about the rock concert when I found an old newspaper clipping in a scrapbook in our museum. The Goffstown News didn't have a photo accompanying their front-page story so I posted an inquiry in several Facebook groups. No one had pictures for me but many people shared their memories of the festival.

Someone hitchhiked 500 miles from Virginia while another rode her horse from Old Coach Road. Not everyone bothered to buy the $5 festival tickets but one of my correspondents still has his. He said that being in the same room in Hartleb's house as Edgar Winters was "pretty cool for a teen kid."

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The event was in New Boston just north of the Mont Vernon town line.
Ticket courtesy of John Demetry

I hadn't heard of Sweeney's Glider but I did speak with a former member of the band, which took its name from a hang glider built by Terry Sweeney. I found on YouTube an early music video documenting the glider's first flight; the video, supposedly filmed somewhere in New Boston, was the first to be produced by Fritz Wetherbee, who is still making videos for New Hampshire Chronicle a half-century later.

I've been researching the "End of the Rainbow" Rock Festival for two years but I didn't want to publish a story in the Beacon without a picture. At last I found photos in the Wadleigh Memorial Library's microfilm archives of the Milford Cabinet. The Cabinet was published by the Rotch family for most of the 20th century, and editor William Rotch and his photographer Gordon King attended the 1971 festival in an "unofficial capacity."

Rotch wrote, "There were plenty of scraggly far-out types," but overall he seemed to enjoy the experience and disagreed with the Union Leader's disapproving description of "a drug and booze-filled atmosphere." Rotch did acknowledge that a copious amount of Boone's Farm apple wine was consumed over the weekend.

One of King's photo captions reads, "Here the candid camera catches a glimpse of a transaction which the photographer is convinced, although he cannot prove, involved the sale of mescaline. More evident were lighted cigarettes being passed from one person to another, and it seemed highly unlikely that they were Salems or Virginia Slims."

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Booking slip for the Allman Brothers Band

Local and state police were present to ensure that visiting motorcycle gangs did not cause trouble. The police were not allowed in the fenced-off field unless requested by the organizers.

The New Boston police chief, who lent his uniform jacket to a young lady who was overly exposed to sunshine, was quoted as saying that the event brought "absolutely no benefit to the town or to anyone else, as far as I can see." One of my Facebook correspondents might disagree. She wrote, "I don't remember much but I'm still married to the guy I met that weekend."